Big Sky Country
by Talieson
Summary: Willow and Giles head to Montana...


Disclaimer: some is mine; the rest joss  
  
Big Sky Country  
  
So this was Montana. Wow. Willow had never seen so much plaid in all her life. On the other hand. Horsies! Lots of them. Just trotting and prancing and other horse like things; it was really neat.  
  
She and Giles had rented an all terrain SUV and started out. So this was Montana. That was the sentence that came up the most whenever she thought of the place. She wondered if she were inadvertently damming the place with faint praise...what the heck did that phrase mean anyway?  
  
"Stop!" Willow yelped.  
  
Giles let out a muffled curse and pulled the SUV up short.  
  
"Sorry, sorry! I really am. But hey...I got one!" the red-head said excitedly. The witch could feel the Slayer life pulse calling her. She tilted her head to one side... auras all had certain feels to them and the slayer aura was always of sun on the desert, call of the predator.  
  
Once Giles's heart was safely back in his chest, he let a fond smile cross his face. Finally, they'd been in this blasted state for over four days and the slayer that they scryed for had been particularly illusive. "Well, let's hope this one will be easier to convince."  
  
Some of the others had been difficult. For instance, Hepsiba, the Amish girl, Rain Falling Fast, a pigmy tribeswoman from a remote part of Africa, and Lady Charlotte Dearwood of England, had been some of the harder sells. Then, of course, there had been Fatima...perhaps Faith had not been the right person to fetch her; Iran would never be the same. Faith was now the first slayer in over a hundred years that had an entire country after her blood. The bounty on her head was quite large.  
  
Giles rubbed his eyes and turned to Willow, "Shall we be on our way?"  
  
Willow let out a gasp and turned and stared down the road leading to Big Rock, Montana, "Giles, step on it! Our girl's in trouble."  
  
"Oh, bloody hell!" The watcher muttered as he pulled the clutch, "Already?"  
  
Giles would always remember the day he met Alison, the Vampire Slayer with great vividness. Mostly because she was dismembering a demon with a chain saw, that's the sort of thing that sticks with you.  
  
There were two of them. They were large, ugly and were dressed in a combination of leather and piercings. They bore a remarkable resemblance to the biker demons that had attacked Sunnydale the night Willow had raised the dead. The girl was holding her own remarkably well.  
  
The SUV pulled to a stop and its passengers spilled out just in time for the slayer to lop of a head that pulled away with such force that it bounced down an incline to land at their feet.  
  
The girl spun and met an oncoming blade with the still moving chain saw blade; the crossed weapons let off a flurry of sparks. The creature let out a bellow and knocked the saw from her hands and kicked at her midsection. She fell down with a soft grunt and pushed herself to her feet before grabbing an arm and flipping it over her shoulder.  
  
Giles was impressed. Her moves were clumsy but the strength and potential skill behind them was nothing short of amazing.  
  
What Willow noticed was that this slayer had taken the time to put on plastic goggles, gloves and a heavy duty apron, in case she got splattered with demon icor. Well, a 9.0 for prepared- ness.  
  
The downed demon made to rise but was prevented when the slayer kicked him in the groin and reached out and snapped his neck. The girl let out a gasp and backed away from the body and tripped over her own feet.  
  
"Well, I must say well done." Giles said softly.  
  
The girl jumped to her feet and faced the strangers; a tall older fellow with glasses and a young woman with really red hair, who were lit up by their vehicles headlights and the ever lightening sky.  
  
Willow stepped forward, "Hi! We're here to rescue you."  
  
The girl blinked. She looked at the dead bodies then back at them. "Thank you? And you are?"  
  
Giles shook himself, "Ah yes introductions. My name is Rupert Giles and this is my associate Willow Rosenberg."  
  
"Alison Cooper, pleasure. And you came to save me from the monsters?" Alison said slowly as she pulled off the goggles and gloves. Alison was about 6'3, a little overweight, with hair that was something between russet and auburn and green-brown eyes and at the moment she was sporting a confused expression.  
  
"Well, yes that... and to tell you about your destiny." Giles replied.  
  
Al Cooper felt reality go by-by. This had really been a trying night. First the town had been attacked by the biker gang from hell...literally. Then she Alison Fern Cooper had found herself fighting them. And kicking ass. Alison who didn't even know how to make a fist had killed these things when no-one else had been able too. And know some British guy was talking about destiny. Any moment know she expected Rod Sterling to walk out from behind a bush and give a monologue on the strangeness of human existence.  
  
"Destiny? Me?" Alison squeaked, "I'm sure you've got the wrong girl."  
  
Willow shook her head and smiled, "No. We really don't."  
  
"Have you been having dreams lately? That you're someone else?" Giles asked softly as not to startle her.  
  
"That I'm someone else?"  
  
"A medieval tavern wench for example. Or maybe an Irish nun, a Chinese prostitute or perhaps a pioneer girl?" Giles continued.  
  
"Yes, actually." Alison pulled off her splattered apron and added it to the pile of gore splattered gear at her feet. "The disturbing thing about these dreams—besides you knowing about them, total strangers that you are—the disturbing thing is how when I'm someone else in freaky dreamland is how often I die a painful death." Al paused and glanced up at him. "Hey, you think these guys are really dead?"  
  
"I suspect that they've shuffled off the mortal coil for good." Giles confirmed.  
  
The slayer smiled, "Oh good." She then promptly fainted.  
  
Willow blinked, "that went well."  
  
Al opened her eyes with a moan to find that it had not been a dream. The big ugly things still lie dead a few feet from where she lay and the two strangers who wanted to talk about destiny were still there.  
  
"Are you alright?" Giles asked worriedly.  
  
"Other than the painful mammoth headache and sense of unreality? Just splendid and you?" Alison grasped the offered hand up and was pulled to her feet.  
  
Giles let out a sigh of relief. Sarcasm – a typical slayer reaction to a traumatic event.  
  
"Since ya'll come to rescue me I can only assume that you know about what's going on here? Right? I'd like some answers."  
  
"Ask away," Willow smiled encouragingly.  
  
"What the heck were those things?" Al kicked at one of the...things.  
  
"Demons." Giles waited for her reaction. He rather hoped she didn't faint again.  
  
"Biblical or Mythological? Cause there's a difference." Al brushed back her hair. "I don't think these are the Biblical kind because a) I killed them dead, and b) these are so not eternal beings of light gone bad."  
  
"The ah latter yes" Giles exchanged a look with Willow. Most people didn't know the difference. Nor did they really care to differincate.  
  
Al shook her head sharply to clear out the cobwebs, "I like to read. Okay, let's hear about the destiny thing."  
  
Willow smiled, he loved this part.  
  
"The world is older than we know..."  
  
"Why, pray tell, would I be chosen to be some sort of mystic warrior babe? I'm just not hero material." Alison shook her head. "I can accept a world where demons run amok and magic abounds..."  
  
"You can?" Willow was surprised—especially after Al's brief absence from the waking world. Most people would be freaking out by now. Not this girl—'"It figures,"' was all she said after Giles's spiel on what was really going on in the world.  
  
"One word...Godzilla! In a world where a gigantic atomic lizard stomps about Manhattan, I think just about anything is possible. However, the whole Al's a superhero thing is kinda out there."  
  
Giles opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a shout.  
  
"Alison!"  
  
"Daddy?" Al shouted back. "I'm over here."  
  
A tall man with worried eyes and a sad scruffy face strode across the yard. He scooped his daughter up in his arms.  
  
"Dad, Dad...I'm ok stop fussing," Alison squirmed out of her parent's grasp. Her father looked her over critically. Dirty, sweaty, about to fall down from exhaustion, and bleeding from various places and she says she's okay? Riiight.  
  
"Al, what were you thinking? I told you to stay in the house." Jake unsuccessfully tried to keep his voice level.  
  
"Yeah, well, when the demons broke down the door and tried to feel me up, I kinda figured that the house was no longer safe." Al retorted.  
  
Jake blinked, "Demons?"  
  
Alison nodded, "The ugly biker boys with unique hygiene problems."  
  
Giles thought that this was the right moment to step in, "Excuse me."  
  
Jake turned at the voice. A tall older man with glasses and a small red- head with a sweet smile stood in front of a mini-van, he really hadn't notice them what with scolding his kid and all.  
  
"Hello?" ventured Al's father.  
  
"I'm Rupert Giles and this is Willow Rosenberg," Giles continued. Willow gave a little wave.  
  
"Jake Cooper."  
  
There was a long awkward silence.  
  
Alison looked from the no longer strangers but still strange people to her dad and rolled her eyes. Yep, things had just gotten more complicated. "They've come for me!" her voice came out as an overly cheerful squeak. "They say I'm a superhero and I've got a destiny and they've come to take me to a special school to learn...special stuff." She said it all in both high frequency and speed.  
  
Jake blinked. Thought and abruptly got angry, "What load of B.S. are you trying to feed my kid?" To be fair he had been very worried and scared for his daughter and that was coming out in a growling rush.  
  
"Mr. Cooper, I assure you that we mean your daughter no harm," Giles began.  
  
"Get off my property you..." fortunately, Jake was interrupted. Or unfortunately, as he was attacked by something large, gruesome and unwholesome that had just dropped down from the roof of the house. On top of him.  
  
Al didn't scream. She didn't panic. She simply marched up and bodily lifted the thing off of her father and tossed it to the other side of the lawn. "Daddy, are you okay?"  
  
Jake Cooper stared at his daughter. Alison wasn't strong enough to lift...whatever that was. She could barely move a bale of hay. "Yeah, I guess so."  
  
"Oh good." Then his daughter who could barely make a fist began to knock the stuffing out of the creature. She pulled an ax out of the chopping block, and as fights go it was messy, short and fatal.  
  
The Brit helped Jake up, "Really, no B.S. to be found or fed."  
  
"I won't have to ware spandex will I?" Alison rubbed her goo covered hands on her jeans absently, "'cause I really don't think I could pull it off...sides I don't think it breaths too well and you want britches that breath when fighting giant robots."  
  
Willow's eyes got really big. "Spandex not required. Err Giant robots?  
  
Alison nodded, "At some point the government is bound to send giant robots...did I mention I haven't slept in a long time. Also suffering from some blood loses."  
  
"Would someone please explain to me what's going on?" Jake said very slowly, mentally he counted to a hundred... it wouldn't do to get his shotgun out... just yet.  
  
"Could I get some medical assistance and possibly a cookie?" Al asked hopefully.  
  
Xander, Willow noted, would approve of the workmanship put into the house. Two stories of what he called 'solid architecture' as apposed to 'shoddy cardboard,' it was inset with large windows. Jake had taken the time to tack up heavy plastic so to keep out the local wild life and the cold Montana mountain air.  
  
"Need some help getting patched up?" Willow asked taking in Alison's battered appearance.  
  
"That would be great!" Al said tossing a worried glance towards her father and Mr. Giles. The silence after the big explanation was long and ongoing as her dad slowly processed the information. She supposed it was a left over part of his father's Appalachian heritage to regurgitate data until it made sense and hey wasn't that a gross way to think of it. Anything to get out of the room.  
  
Al went to a closet and extracted an outsized first aid kit. She looked at the rooms occupants and shuddered at the pained noiselessness of it. Shouting would be better. Whenever, something came up that was out of Jake Coopers depth or disrupted his calm world...he got quiet. It was not something that boded well.  
  
"Willow, want to see my room?" Al asked desperately.  
  
Alison's room had a big round window, an antique desk with a laptop and nearly every wall was covered with bookshelves overflowing with books. The room was tidy with signs of the steady progression from child to woman littering the room, a care bear lamp on the desk, a pile of textbooks on a table, and makeup on the dresser.  
  
Willow followed Al to the bathroom. The newly awakened slayer sat on the edge of the bathtub with a bottle of Evian and a bottle of extra strength aspirin she'd snagged from the kitchen.  
  
"I think that just this once it's okay to go above the advised minimal dosage," Al muttered before swallowing four.  
  
"That's enough for you," Willow grabbed the bottle away from the girl. She looked over the critically. "Where are you hurt?"  
  
Alison looked at her for a moment, "Super healing? Right?"  
  
Willow's eyes narrowed, "Yes."  
  
Al pulled up her top to reveal a bandage that covered most of her abdomen: a somewhat bloody bandage. "It had these big claws and three mouths and it kept coming at me and at first I thought it wasn't real that I'd been hallucinating or something but then I thought nothing imaginary could smell that bad."  
  
Willow gingerly helped pull off the bandage and let out a hiss. Three perpendicular slash marks were raked deeply across the pale flesh. Fortunately, slayer healing had kicked in and the wounds had already crusted over. Willow flashed back to Sunnydale and her first injury. To be the one bleeding had made the darkness all the more real and not just something she knew about intellectually. Oh, sure, the dead had raised but it wasn't yet personal.  
  
"Could you not tell my dad?"  
  
"Why Alison? Why did these Powers choose my kid?" Jake asked taking a sip of coffee.  
  
Giles winced at the disbelieving tone of voice. "The actual criteria are quite unknown. She had the potential from birth and resent events required that she and others be called?"  
  
Jake sat the cup down and gave him a leery look, "resent events?"  
  
"The end of the world," Giles replied levelly.  
  
"Oh." There wasn't much you could say to that.  
  
Giles took in the expression of the other man, "Don't worry. We stopped it."  
  
Jake stared at him, "That's good."  
  
Alison was changing into a pair of clean pajamas...something lavender with baskets of kittens, so Willow had taken to browsing the shelves. The girl had quite a collection, everything from Tolkian and C. S. Lewis to Heinlein and Clark, fiction to nonfiction, theology, mythology, military history, and books on super string theory to books on criminal psychology. A slayer who loves to read; Giles would be extremely happy. He might even cry or not— but extreme happiness was a high probability.  
  
Hey! A collection of turtles, porcelain turtles, glass turtles and little stone carved turtles. And look at that a turtle music box with a little turtle carousel.  
  
The bathroom door swung open and startled Willow who dropped the carousel smashing it all over the floor.  
  
Al sighed, "Its okay. Really it..."  
  
Willow held her hand over the smashed music box, "Assemble." The pieces swirled up in a tiny sparkly tornado and reformed. Willow picked it up off the floor and sat back on its shelf.  
  
Al made an odd meeping sound.  
  
"Er...I'm sorry about dropping your turtle box."  
  
"How?"  
  
"I'm a witch."  
  
Al looked at Willow for a long moment, "are you a good witch or a bad witch?"  
  
"Can she give them back? The superpowers I mean?" Jake asked hopefully.  
  
Giles shook his head. "No. She is the slayer for as long as she lives. You need to understand-you cannot keep her safe. What she is will draw danger to her. No matter where she goes. If you allow her to come with us...we can't guarantee her safety; however, we can guarantee that she will not face danger alone. The Academy will teach that which she needs to survive."  
  
Jake rubbed his eyes and laughed wearily, "Every parent thinks their child's special...but this?"  
  
"It's hard to know that you can't protect them forever," Giles understood completely.  
  
"Alright, she can go," Jake sighed. "I saw her kill that thing. I couldn't even get her to go hunting with me."  
  
The phone rang and Jake stood, "I haft to get that."  
  
Giles watched him leave; his eyes then fell to the coffee table in front of him. Hmm. He picked up what appeared to be one of Alison's resent essays. It was entitled "Modes of Being." And had a note from the teacher at the top  
  
A+ Alison , excellent as always  
  
I just wish I understood what  
  
you were getting at—it's my own fault  
  
for letting the class choose it's own topics.  
  
The watcher flipped through the essay and came to a stop and started to read...  
  
It could be said that the differences between active and passive modes of being are illusory in nature. For example while the act of conception is itself an active work. While the actual gestation is passive; the mother just is...as the universe just is they don't have to do anything to sustain life they just have to be. Thus, is the difference illusory.  
  
Who you passively is the model for who you are actively. Who you are in being is who you are in action. That is to say your silences form your words and your words create your silences. To put it more succinctly who you are in private is who you are in public and vice versa. Both at once—cause and effect, a particle and a wave.  
  
Giles was stunned...what have we here? A mystic in the making?  
  
He could hear Jake in the kitchen, "She did what? Ran over it with your tractor? Stampeded the horses? Done what with the nail gun!" 


End file.
